With
the French fighting for their lives at Verdun
pleas were made to the other Allied powers to relieve the pressure upon
the French forces by mounting offensives against Germany. The Russian
response was to identify an area of weakness in the German line and
assault it with a much larger force in the hope that they could break
through and cause the Germans to relocate troops from Verdun.
Lake Naroch was chosen as it was guarded by just 70,000 men. Russian
forces totalled over 300,000. After two days of bombardment the Russian
assault began. It failed. The bombardment had not been as accurate as
anticipated and the Russian soldiers moved across no-mans land in groups
rather than spreading out: they were easy targets for the German Machine
Gunners. The floundering attack gained several kilometres of land in
some places but made little impact on the German defences, or to their
troop allocations. All of the captured land was retaken over the following
months by German counter attacks.